Some embodiments described herein relate generally to methods and apparatus for automated load balancing and specifically to methods and apparatus for automated “ENode-based” load balancing between multiple links in a mixed Ethernet and Fibre Channel portion of a computer network.
In a mixed Ethernet and Fibre Channel portion of a computer network, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) sessions are typically established via Fabric Login (FLOGI) requests and Fabric Discovery (FDISC) requests from various FCoE ENodes. The sessions can be load-balanced across all interfaces (or ports) of a Fibre-Channel Switch via a Load Balancer or a gateway device. Typically, loads are balanced based on each interface's load (current number of sessions) and capacity (bandwidth). This can cause logins (e.g., FLOGI and FDISC) from one FCoE ENode to be distributed across multiple interfaces of the Fibre-Channel Switch. For example, one interface of the Fibre-Channel Switch can be associated with the FCoE ENode's FLOGI, while multiple other interfaces of the Fibre-Channel Switch can be associated with the ENode's FDISC logins. This can produce problems when an interface of the Fibre-Channel Switch becomes inactive because sessions associated with multiple FCoE Enodes can be deactivated.
Accordingly, a need exists for methods and apparatus that can associate multiple sessions of an FCoE ENode through the same interface of a Fibre-Channel Switch.